Falling Skies

Fourteen

"You what?!"

December's hand slams against the glass desk of his mother's office, the glass nearly cracking under the force of his anger. It's a cool sensation, the materiel soothing under his burning palms. His rigid hands crash against the smooth surface one more time to demand the attention of the woman ahead of him who sits frustratingly still.

"What. Did. You. Do?" It's an animalistic snarl as his vision bleeds scarlet, body hunched over and so tense his muscles ache for any hint of release. He bends forward over the near shattering glass, the second layer of the material faceted and crippled under his white-knuckled grip.

The woman dry swallows, her posture too rigid to be natural. "What was necessary."

"Necessary? Necessary?" He laughs,  a short noise forced out of his throat. The word itself tasting of a bitter poison he only wishes he could pour into her throat. "I decide what is necessary in this facility. Do you know why?"

There's no answer.

"Answer me!"

This time the woman jumps when his balled fist falls upon the table. The entire piece crumbling as red stains linger on its surface. Bits of glass stick to his rough skin as he bites his lip with more anger than pain.

"I put you in charge, December, don't test me now." She threatens though the effect is lost in translation, the words burning out before reaching the boy ahead of her.

"You do not undermine my authority. If I promised my cousin," Jenn flinches at the word. "that I would hold off on surgery then I, and everyone in this facility, will abide by my word no matter how much they hate it. You, Mother, are just as much under my authority as everyone else in this facility."

Only now does he feel the pain in his hand, spare droplets of blood marking the table as his hand throbs in response to the sight. There is no sound in the room, just his mother's faltered breaths as she attempts, and fails, to compose herself. Her face is a mess, red lips puckered as they try to ease their quivering, her eyes staring through her son and into the wall, the orbs wide and brown and distant.

"He's just like your father." She whispers, eyes locking into her son's in one swift movement. The brown is swirled with a pain, December's reflection staring back at him in the watery abyss, a distorted sense of self flowing through him at the mirrored world within her. "He'll always love those creatures and he'll always want to save each and every last one of them. You know why your father left?" She quizzes, a newfound strength drawing into her. "Because he wasn't strong enough to do what was necessary."

She dry swallows once more but her lost words catch at her throat, a few tears overflowing as that small vision of December disappears, trailing down her cheek before she hastily wipes it away. Her body slouches, a new side of her many faceted angles coming to life before him.

"I don't care why Dad left." It comes out harsher than intended, mother and son both drawing back from one another as his poison floods the room, bringing in a supernatural chill with it. "What I care about is not losing my one connection to him. Yet, you can't help but dig yourself in between us at any chance that you get."

It's his turn to break, to mimic the bloody glass beneath him as his lips falter and voice cracks before silence overcomes him, the thought of losing that annoying little boy somehow world shattering at its smallest. His chest hiccups, mind a scattered catastrophe as it scrambles to form his next argument before completely falling apart. The mere idea of not being with Ryder, of losing his trust or losing him altogether overshadowing any anger for his mother.

"You can hate him all that you want but you're not allowed to ruin what I have with him. I know..." his memories flicker, the image of Ryder and Wren's bodies intertwined, the sporadic tears of the creature mixed with the coos of his cousin blinding his vision. "That there must be a reason for his actions that he isn't telling us. But he's family, and family doesn't need an explanation."